"Lo!—Rangitoto, Motutap',

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 184, 4 August 1900, Page 4 (Supplement)

"Lo! —Rangitoto, Motutap',

. Waiheke, Mount Victoria, With rugged peaks and craggy sides And bases bound with, scoria!"

As far as I know, "Victoria" is the only word that has yet been made to rhyme with "scoria," but even that is not original, "Tim Doolan" invented it long ago.

Our poet' lias two nice little verses on "Eemuera," in which he speaks of it as a place "where cattle browse and lambkins play." Good old "lambkins!" They were invented by Chaucer, I think, and have been the special property of the spring poet ever since. Now, why don't they say "lambs" instead of "lambkins?" But cf com'se, it wouldn't be quite poetical enough. It's about on a par with that mysterious word "welkin," whereof no man knows the meaning, but which every poet rings for all he is worth. But in another verse I came across an expression which struck me as being quite original: "Twelve swift lunations o'er iis flew." "Lunations" Is decidely better than the prosaic word "month," besides which it is longer, and reminds one, not inappropriately, of a certain institution at Avondale.-

"A' Foreigner" sends along io this office an indignant protest, couched in a near approach to phonetic spelling, against some of the charges made concerning juvenile immorality in Auck,land. He says: —"I am very disgusted with the corespodence which aper in your paper re the juvenille imorality. I, as a foreigner in your colony, know all baut the Auckland imorality and true meaning af it, but your paper go all round the world, and if any foreigner see your corespodence he will sai that the city of Auckland is the nest of lewdness, and that every girl, from the smolest age to the womanhood, includin rich and poor is" — (well, no better than she should be.). The "Foreigner," who has not mastered the vile intricacies of English spelling, goes on to remark; —'"The worst thing of it is, when I see that your corrspodents are fathers of the sai girl, and they want police or bylaw to prevent imorality, but I can see that no police or by-law can not put a end to the imorality, because if they prevent in one locality they go to another place, which will be good for them for sometime. The only persons to put a end to the imorality are parents of the girl, but as long as parent encourage girls and do not take care of their children imorality will be bad as ever." There is much truth in this remark, and the foreign correnpondent strikes another nail on the liead when he says that some women nn'l girls are forced into immorality because their husbands or fathers .spend their earnings in beer. He winds up his epistle with the oracular de"ivprance: "All the blame of the immnrnlitv T bestow on the man alone." Timse bold, bnd men again! I am j iiinost tPmnted to believe that ' A Foreigner" is a woman, and that she

hasn't yet forgiven Adam for eating Eve's apple, and then blaming the lady for giving it to him.

They have, in* England, a war-evil, which" we happily have not here—juvenile correspondence with Lord Roberts. Cape papers tell us it has reached alarming proportions. This is the kind of thing that is perpetrated on the great man: "Dear Lord Roberts—l am seven years old, and am writing to you to tell you how much I like you. I hope you will beat the nasty Boers, and that you will not be killed. (Comforting!) Sister Ethel and I think of you always, and pray for you every night—l am, your loving friend, etc." And we may be quite sure that our only "Bobs" wades through all these epistles and writes replies to all with his own handprobably after a hard day's work when his aides and secretaries are sleeping the sleep of tired men. One lady in England was heard to boast that all her little dears, to the number of five or six, had written to Lord Roberts, and that she was proud to say she had helped the youngest to compose her sweet little letter. What on earth are we to do with such people? I suppose we must excuse them and pray for a sense of humour. There may be many genuine letters from children to the Conunander-in-Chief — but for parents to suggest the idea and virtually make children do it is really absurd.

A writer in a Cape paper very pertinently asks why people do not get their little ones to write to Lord Kitchener. Why, indeed! 1 am not a wealthy man, but I would give a week's salary to see Kitchener's face when he received a letter of this type. But I would not like to be too close—the atmosphere would be sultry. And some thousand miles away a loving mother would be experiencing considerable difficulty in explaining to her little son or daughter the non-ar-rival of a reply from South Africa. However, I have no fear of the colonial youngster adopting such tactics. If he did write it would probably be in this style: "Dear Bobs: Awfully glad to see you're! stoushing the Boers. If you want any help, we're behind you here to a bloke. Ta-ta, old palgive my love to Kruger." But he also would wait in vain for an answer.

'"The Land of Topsey Turveydom" would be an appropriate description of China, apart from the extraordinary revolution proceeding there just now. For the ways of John Chinaman are in many respects exactly opposite to our ways, and his point of view is as far from ours as the East is from the.West. In nothing is this more plainly marked than in the ordinary etiquette of every-day life. To take off your hat to a senior is a grave offence in the Flowery Land; to be seen in company with your wife in public is to stamp yourself as distinctly "no class." If you enquire after the health of a Chinaman's female relatives you commit a deadly breach of decorum; at the iitmost, if you refer to them at all, you must speak vaguety of "the family." No Chinaman with any pretensions to dignity would dream of mentioning his wife; it is true politeness to ignore her existence, so far as outsiders are concerned. If his "missus" dies, John dare not show any signs of grief (supposing he feels any), for to do so would bring upon him the ridicule and contempt of his neighbours. And,- instead of dressing in "black" for the funeral, as we would do, he arrays himself in white. If he had the awful audacity to address his elder brother by name, he wQiild promptly get his head punched. He nuist always say "venerable elder brother," or look out for squalls. And so on througout the whole code of etiquette—a code that has been handed down \mchanged from generation to generation, through centuries of time. Is it surprisingl that the Chinaman, when he sees white people breaking incessantly all his iron-bound rules of decorum and politeness, lie regards them as ruthless barbarians and "foreign devils?"

There has, from time to time, been correspondence on the question of exhibiting- in' shop windows; pictures representing nude figures. I was surprised the other day, on looking into an art shop in town, tosee that a very inartistic compromise had been made —that copies of well-known, pictures had been ruined from an artistic point of view—by painting in hideous draperies. The pictures I refer to are "Truth and the Little Child," and the celebrated "Judgment of Paris." In this latter the figure of the conquering Venus is draped with an extremely hideous piece of green art muslin (pardon the anachronism), or what seems to be art/muslin. The other picture is disfigured in the same way. Now, there are numerous objections to this drapery. First of all, Venus did not wear it—read Tennyson's "Enone" and you will see that she did not. And, above all, Art must be Truth. Secondly, if she had worn anything, she would have worn white —so far as we can judge by the mutilated remains of fashion plates of those days. And, thirdly, such drapery merely draws attention to the nudeness of the figure. "Qui s'excuse, s'accuse,' as the French say. I am not going- to discuss the question as to whether exhibitions of the "nude" are advisable or not, but let us have one or the other —not a compromise. If we are going to object to the "nude," let us drape all our figures fully—let us paint substantial draperies into our Art Gallery pictures, and clothe the nakedness of our statues in the Museum. But surely Art is too strong and too noble to descend to such compromises as I have mentioned, i

The defeat of Sir George Turner in his attempt to oust the Mac Lean Ministry does not simply mean shuttingthe Treasury door in his face, but is fraught with far-reaching1 consequences, says the Melbourne "Age." In fact, it also involves Mr Peacock's appearance at what Jeames Yellowplush, Esquire, calls the hymenal halter*. In one of his laughing moods Mr Peacock announced from-the platform that he had made his contemplated marriage conditional upon the expulsion of Mr McLean from office. This is the first time in our political history that such a double event has found a backer. It turned out to be a very long shot Indeed. Nevertheless, the announcement had a wonderful effect in stimulating feminine interest in the debate. The galleries were simply crowded every night by breathless ladies, who had made books on the event, and were anxious to see how the favourite stood when the numbers were up.